


baby we built this house

by daholdi



Category: Alex Stern - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Angst, Retrospective
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:14:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25139818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daholdi/pseuds/daholdi
Summary: Darlinton's first year at Yale: being Dante isn't what he expected.
Kudos: 5





	baby we built this house

Darlington couldn’t believe his reality. He’d gone to sleep, chasing the idea of magic and elixirs. And he awoke on the other end with this strange man named Elliot Sandow dressed in a tweed suit telling him about a job offer Darlington would be qualified for, due to his interest in magic or whatever that meant. 

“What kind of offer?” Darlington asked curiously, trying to eliminate all the emotion from his face that he felt inside. 

He thought that maybe this guy was some kind of psychologist, testing Darlington on if he was crazy or not. After all, seventeen-year old boys don’t collapse on their front porches, eyes and ears gushing blood with spell books in Latin on the kitchen counters. He didn’t want to reveal all of his cards too soon, lest he taken away to some institution, for Black Elm would rot without his care. 

“New Haven is a place where magic has taken root, and Yale’s various secret societies try to manipulate it for their own needs,” The Elliot Sandow said simply. “There has to be oversight, which is where me and my associates come in. We’re called the House of Lethe.”

Darlington turned that over in his head. Lethe, like the river of the Greek Underworld, which wiped the memories of all who dared to touch it. This House of Lethe must keep the barrier between magic and mundane in New Haven, keeping the minds of the residents free of the magic that lurked in their city. 

The man continued, his grey eyes watching Darlington carefully, “We protect New Haven against the dangers of the tombs’ magic. It’s a difficult job, but from what we’ve observed of you, we believe that you would excel at it. I would love to discuss more with you, but first I’ll need your word that you will accept our officer. ”

Darlington didn’t even have to hesitate. “Yes, I’ll join.” 

He had believed that magic would save Black Elm, and this strange man had come with a job offer. This is what he had believed in, and magic had saved him just like in the stories. His head was swimming as laid back on the hospital bed. Magic was real and he was going to use it for this mysterious society. Amidst his bliss, Darlington realized that the strange man from the House of Lethe was still talking. 

“—So, you obviously need to apply to Yale as soon as possible but just try your best in the SATs and essays, we’ll take care of it all on the admissions side.”

“What?”

Darlington shot up as fast as he could, even though it hurt like hell. _Was this guy serious, about Yale?_

Darlington had tried as well as he could in school but it was alchemy and the arcane that he focused all of his effort on. He worked on Latin and chemistry for hours instead of American history or Spanish. He had reasoned that magic was going to save Black Elm just like his Grandfather had said, not his junior year report card. And Darlington could barely afford to heat the house, much less own it. Going to a school as expensive as Yale was out of the question. 

Elliot Sandow paused and leaned forward, “The House of Lethe finds it most effective for those who deal with the behavior of Yale’s tombs to also attend the school. Our group will take care of all your application to ensure your acceptance, we’ve done this before. And don’t worry about tuition, as payment for your services, full tuition and a generous stipend will be provided each semester.”

 _How powerful were these people?_ Darlington thought. They could ensure his placement at Yale with such confidence and drop hundreds of thousands of dollars on tuition at the drop of a hat.

“Well Mr. Arlington,” the man from Lethe said rising, grabbing his tweed coat from the back of the chair. “We’ll be in contact with you soon, just make sure to submit your Yale application so we can take care of it.” 

And Elliot Sandow disappeared with a wink, leaving the scene of cloves and sulfur in the air. A nurse rushed in to check his vitals, as this mysterious man in a striped scarf was holding her back from coming into the room. Darlington was poked and prodded, but felt numb. What he thought was a fool’s errand of magic was not only real, but needed for this mysterious society. For the first time in a while, Darlington had hope for his future. With the money from this job, he could keep Black Elm. He smiled and lay back into the hospital bed, sinking into dreamless sleep.

Darlington hadn’t taken hand-outs from his parents even when he was in truly dire straights, so he sure wasn’t going to from this House of Lethe that promised to get him into Yale. So, he spent the rest of summer in the local library pouring over the SAT books they had on file. Every day, without fail, he would spend four hours reading passages and doing math problems. He put his interest in magic on the back-burner, shutting the books and exotic ingredients in the attic. There would be time to explore magic at Yale, when it became his job. Now, excelling at school and bringing up grades became a priority. 

He started putting in effort into school again, turning in assignments on time and studying for tests. Darlington spoke up in class and did every bit of extra-credit he could. His junior year report card showed the results of his efforts, a long string of As. Darlington repeated his exhaustive efforts in the following year, staying up late studying for exams and spending long hours in the computer lab writing the admission essays for Yale. He didn’t apply to any other colleges, he knew little about the House of Lethe, but trusted them enough with his acceptance. The long nights of winters turned into spring with budded trees and the scent of flowers. And then the days started to boil, Daniel Arlington was offered admission to Yale University. 

Darlington knew that this society helped him get in, but he knew in his heart that he would have gotten in anyways. But he finished out that year school year languishing in in the long days and blue skies, for Darlington knew that his life was about to become a whole lot weirder in the fall.

However, the weird came to him a lot sooner, in a pleasant June day. Darlington had just gotten back from his shift at the Peabody Museum, and stumbled over the heavy packages wrapped in brown paper sitting on his doorstep. There was no note, but he knew it was from Lethe. It took him three trips to move all of the stacks into Black Elm. Once they were unwrapped he found stacks of books about the Lethe and the tombs and magic. There were histories of each of the tomb’s detailing their rituals and the precautions that a Dante and Virgil had to take. 

_Dante and Virgil?_ Darlington thought with confusion, but found his answer later in a book of Lethe’s history, explaining the rituals of Lethe, along with every spell and ward he needed to know.

He read about the Grays, New Haven’s ghosts from the past that could interfere with tomb rituals, taking copious notes on the most nefarious Grays discussed in the book. Darlington also found a list of the official languages for each tomb tucked in the back corner of a book of Yale history and dedicated himself to studying all of those listed. Dutch, Italian, and French For Dummies books joined the stacks of Latin and Ancient Greek dictionaries by his bed. Vocabulary lists were taped on every wall of Black Elm and the house echoed with his daily recitations of verb tenses. 

In the last book in the stack, one on a history of New Haven, he found a message addressed to him in the inside cover: 

_To my new Dante,_

_Let’s get this shit started!_

_Virgil,_   
_619-555-0100_

After buying a cell phone and various text exchanges, Darlington had been peer-pressured into taking a train to New York City to meet his Virgil: Michelle Alameddine. She was from San Diego, a petite girl with thick blonde curls who passionately researched Hellenistic art history in high school. According to Michelle, her fluency in Ancient Greek and Latin pushed her application to the top of Lethe’s pile and she was chosen as the new Dante. Michelle was nice but talkative, often speaking with a brutal honesty that made Darlington unsure of how to react. She had insisted on him visiting her before the fall semester started to they could get to know each other for “bonding purposes,” in Michell’s words. 

Michelle was an Art History major interning at the Met for the summer and took him to some fast-casual restaurant on the Upper-East side for lunch. Darlington departed the city two hours later after surviving one exhausting Q&A lunch session from Michelle. She wanted to know everything about him, his major, fall classes, interests in magic. He believed that she could have gone for another hour, but had to leave for a meeting about Roman statue preservation. Michelle left in a whirlwind, with a flirting smile to their waiter and a promise to come to New Haven before the fall semester as she dashed out the door into the hot summer day. 

Besides his visit to Michelle in the city, Darlington’s summer was as quiet and as boring as it could be for one who was going to be a magical enforcer in-training in the fall. He took tickets and worked the front desk at Peabody in the day, returning home to Black Elm every night to dive more into the mystic world he was now apart of. He read every single one of the books that Michelle had dropped off for him and his language skills started to gradually improve. 

Darlington was slipping more into the world of the arcane, the life he lived with his Grandfather seemed a thousand lifetimes ago. He had starting ordering ingredients for the elixirs again; his contacts were shocked when Darlington contacted them again. It had been almost two years and they thought he was dead, but Darlington took it in stride. His stores were restocked, allowing him to practice creating pure magic in Bernadette’s prized copper pots that shone with the light of a thousand suns.

It was the end of July, and the evening was peaceful as everyone retreated into their homes to escape the suppressing heat for dinner. New Haven looked abandoned, the evening sun reflecting onto the glass storefronts as forgotten decorations from the Fourth of July swung in the faint breeze. Black Elm, for all its sentimental value it held for Darlington, was unbearable during the summer and he went outside to escape the sweltering heat. He sat on the cracked pavement step, hands on his chin. In the distance, he saw the soaring Gothic towers of Yale, piercing the clouds above. Before, he would have moved his eyes to focus on something else, but he continued to stare. He thought of the magic that infiltrated every rock and tree of New Haven, magic that called Yale home. 

**Author's Note:**

> idk if anyone will even read this because the ninth house fandom seems to be dead but the idea for this fic wouldn't get out of my head. sorry if there's any canon issues, i didn't re-read the book before writing this so there might be inconsistencies. anyways next is the fall chapter :)


End file.
